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Book review: Marketisation and Privatisation in Criminal Justice

Document Cited in Related
Vincent
AuthorDr Gwen Robinson
Date01 December 2020
DOI10.1177/0264550520968948a
Published date01 December 2020
Subject MatterBook reviews
PRB968948 454..459
456
Probation Journal 67(4)
References
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Morgan DHJ (2011) Rethinking Family Practices. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Taylor D (2020, June 19) Death of baby in Cheshire prison prompts investigation. Available
at: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/jun/19/death-baby-cheshire-prison-
prompts-investigation (accessed 13 July 2020).
Marketisation and Privatisation in Criminal Justice
K Albertson, M Corcoran, and J Phillips (eds)
Policy Press; 2020, pp. 358; £23.19; pbk
ISBN: 978-1447345817
Reviewed by: Dr Gwen Robinson, Reader in Criminal Justice,
University of Sheffield, UK
Given the rapid spread of marketisation and privatisation in the criminal justice
domain, in the UK and beyond, we perhaps should not be surprised by the pro-
liferation of books on the subject. This is one of a number of edited collections to be
published in the last couple of years: others include Hucklesby and Lister (2018),
Daems and Vander Beken (2018) and Bean (2020). Inevitably, there is some
overlap between these volumes in terms of their coverage (and they have some
contributors in common), but that being said each volume offers something dis-
tinctive. In the case of this book, the ‘something distinctive’ comes in the dual focus
on both marketisation and privatisation, rather than just the latter. In their useful
introduction, the editors elucidate these interconnected concepts which, they rightly
argue, are too often used interchangeably. Marketisation, they suggest, is a much
broader notion that privatisation, entailing ‘the conversion of public services into
marketable commodities [ . . . ] whether or not they have been formally privatised or
remain (at least for now) under public ownership and management’ (p. 6). This is a
good start for a volume that...

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